Pushing back the trolls

With approximately 500 million users, and over that number '¨of tweets sent per day, Twitter has established itself as the foremost means by which to get a short, concise message '¨out to the masses for celebrities, politicians and businesses alike. However, where Twitter breaks down barriers and allows access to high profile figures, monitoring the huge amount of content is becoming increasingly difficult.

Troll attacks

In the last month, a string of attacks were launched via Twitter on Caroline Criado-Perez, the writer and feminist campaigner behind the push to feature Jane Austen's image on banknotes. As a result of her work, she began receiving threats via Twitter to rape and kill her.

Labour MP Stella Creasy, who had publicly supported Criado-Perez's campaign, also received threats from Twitter trolls, including a tweet of a picture of a masked man wielding a kitchen knife. Mary Beard, a classics professor at Cambridge and another prominent supporter of Criado-Perez, received a tweeted bomb threat. So did several female journalists. The incidents led to calls for a "Twitter silence" where users were encouraged to boycott the social networking site for 24 hours on 4 August 2013. As Criado-Perez puts it, "Twitter has enabled people to behave in a way they wouldn't face-to-face" and trolling on the site is increasingly problematic. In a classic case of the law struggling to catch-up with changing social trends, regulations dealing with threats like those made to Criado-Perez and her supporters are outdated and drafted long before Twitter was established.

Over 100,000 people have signed a petition for new Twitter procedures to deal with abuse - with the site's newly introduced button for reporting abuse criticised for not going far enough.

Offensive content

Currently, threats made via Twitter can be prosecuted under the Malicious Communication Act 1989 (MCA) and the Communications Act 2003 (TCA).

Under the MCA, it is an offence to send an electronic communication in any form which conveys a threat, false or misleading information, or indecent or grossly offensive content. In the latter case, the sender must also intend to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient (or any other person the sender intends to see the content) to be guilty of '¨the offence.

Under the TCA, it is an offence to send by means of a "public electronic communications network" a message '¨that is grossly offensive, indecent, obscene '¨or of menacing character. It is also an offence to use such a network to send for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety a message that '¨the sender knows to be false. A "public electronic communications network" is an electronic communications network provided for the purpose of making electronic communications services available to the public and covers internet communications generally.

Those guilty of an offence under either Act are liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding level five on the standard scale, i.e. £5,000.

The judge will also balance the respect for a private life, as set out in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, with a right of free expression in Article 10. The MCA and TCA provide a framework to prosecute Twitter trolls, and each of the examples above would likely constitute an offence under both Acts. However, the anonymity that the internet can provide causes significant issues with investigation and prosecution. Tracing individuals consumes limited police resources and requires cooperation from ISPs and social media networks themselves.

In response to the recent spate of trolling, Twitter has been working with police and has announced plans to work with the UK Safer Internet Centre as well as hiring of additional staff members to handle abuse reports. But the site has admitted it does '¨not hold location information, so tracking down users remains difficult - although '¨not impossible.

Outdated legislation

Twitter has historically been reluctant to enter into censorship debates, not wanting to judge which tweets are offensive and what constitutes free speech.

As these trolling cases persist and seemingly become darker and more violent, Twitter is facing pressure to draw a line and pro-actively tackle abuse head on, rather than falling back on increasingly dated legislation. It is likely this will come to a head this autumn, when the Culture, Media and Sport Committee look at child protection issues and will be questioning Twitter bosses.

New laws are also being considered '¨that would require social media sites to reveal the identities of trolls, although a significant problem facing Twitter is the issue of online abusers simply creating new anonymous accounts when existing accounts are suspended.

This is a complex area and the '¨government faces a tough task. It would need to balance the privacy of those freely using social media with a suitably effective deterrent that would allow for the anonymity of Twitter trolls to be removed. Requiring Twitter to hold and, when required by the police, to disclose information about its '¨users to the police '¨to investigate may provide a solution. '¨Such a move would no doubt face '¨opposition from privacy campaigners, particularly given recent revelations about government snooping.

Trolls flourish because of the perceived lack of consequences for their actions. It is that perception which the government faces the task of firmly dispelling.